As I have been student teaching with the most fabulous of art teachers, the art classroom has been blessed with brand new stools. Plain ol' boring stools in an art room? No way! We had to beautify these. MaryAnn and I decided that the 7th graders would be the perfect group to paint these stools.

The students were paired up with a partner and selected a different culture, country, or region to focus on. Working collaboratively, the groups began by doing thumbnail sketches inspired by their culture. Next, they created a design together and redrew it the real-life scale of the actual stool top.

It was amazing seeing these students work together as pairs. Some of the groups had amazing artist chemistry immediately, some of them were really shy, some of them struggled, some of them were silly and just had a blast the entire time.

Regardless, the stools turned out beautiful and it was heart-warming to see this whole project come together from the beginning of selecting a partner all the way til the end of having colorful finished stools in the classroom representing different cultures around the world.